What to Do When You Get a No

0:03 Thank you for joining us on the Winning of Selling Podcasts. I'm Professor Scott Plum of the Minnesota Sales Institute and with me is Bill Hellkamp of Reach Development Systems. We've all been told that people buy from people they like. So many sales people spend a lot of time developing a likable personality. This can mean that when a customer tells them no, they take it as a personal rejection. Well, put away that crying towel as Scott and I discuss what to do when you get to know and other Quizzling questions on episode 643 of the Winning and Selling Podcasts.

0:46 It seems like required reading is the thesaurus. If you're a listener of a show, you have to have a thesaurus and know what these words mean, Bill. Well, a great introduction. I think that's so true that people do want to buy from people that they like. We'll look forward to talking about that a little bit later. But before we do, we're in the book The New Sales Simplified by Mike Weinberg. We're doing chapters 10 and 11. These are great chapters, man.

1:11 Powerful. Yeah. I mean, we're talking about the two. And they align with us. Mike's finally gotten to the point where he aligns with us properly. I feel so validated. This is what I feel like. Mike feels validated because they finally aligned himself with us. Exactly. He caught up right. Yeah. I got it. I just want to repeat the first sentence of his chapter because I think it's so powerful. And there's so many different words that I'm going to emphasize on it. So this is the opening sentence. He says to me, the initial face-to-face call with the targeted prospect is the pinnacle of what we do as professional salespeople.

1:53 Yes, that is it. And we look at all the distractions that we have with the sales automation, with wanting to just kind of, as you say, Bill, throw the quote over the wall, not have that face-to-face meeting with a prospect, and really get into a conversation with a qualified prospect. This is a qualified prospect. So these are very important calls. We're looking for ways to save ourselves so much time that we don't get any sales.

2:20 There are certain things in sales that you have to do. And sitting down with a client and having that initial conversation, not an initial presentation where you show them a bunch of crap that doesn't mean anything to them, but it means something to your company. But to have a conversation with them about their business and where they want to go and where you and they can work together, that's what that initial conversation is about. And I know we're going to talk about it in more detail, but people do not prepare for it well. They go take it very cavalierly, and they don't know where they're going with that primary sales call. So that's what we do. We meet with people.

3:00 That face-to-face Scott can be online. That's true. Praise the people who invented this stuff. I have saved so much time not driving around places. I just talked to a client, did a presentation of a proposal yesterday to a client who's 200 miles away. I wouldn't have done it over the phone as comfortably as we did it face-to-face, but online. Yeah, yeah. It is. It makes a big difference, that body language, that conversation.

3:35 I think when a salesperson goes into that first appointment with the prospect and they act casual, I love the saying, you know, casualness leads to casualties. And they think that this is going to be a long drawn out sales process or sales cycles. So they go into it casually, and the salesperson does not create the urgency in that first conversation. What do you mean when you say casually? They go in that they're not. They spend 45 minutes talking about the game last weekend, the weather. I've been in appointments where people pontificate back and forth like a bad mitten match. And they don't say anything for 45 minutes. Why are my here? Why are we here?

4:15 What is the goal? So in casual, you're saying they're not planned out, they're going to let it ride like it does. I've done this a thousand times. I know where I'm going. Exactly. Okay. So let's start off with what is the plan? What is the plan of your sales call? You know, I like to look at what are the possible outcomes of the sales call? What are the goals

4:34 and objectives of the sales call? And to be able to look at how can we make this a successful sales call before we get into it? And what are the possible outcomes? When we look at the outcomes of a sales call, number one, you get a yes, yes is to the next step or a purchase or a sale or a final commitment. A no, there's not a fit or it's not the right time. There's a clear future. So something happening in the future that it's going to have an impact of whether we proceed or not.

4:59 There is a lesson where you debrief, and that's one of the outcomes of a sales call, is debriefing it and asking yourself, if I had a chance to do it over, what would I do different, not that I did anything wrong, but what would I do different? And then the last one is that referral. And I think sometimes when we're working with companies and we're offering solutions to them, sometimes as salespeople, we're not thinking about asking for a referral. And sometimes as customers, we're not giving salespeople's referrals and we're not asking as much as we should. So

5:29 referrals are just a tremendous source of additional income. I think the plan has got to be, how can I move this to the next step? And I don't know, he talks a lot about preparation, but what do you know about this client? What do you know about this person? You can find a few things on LinkedIn, you can find a few things on their website. You don't have to spend five hours studying it, but you should take 20, 30 minutes and learn a little bit about this customer because you certainly don't want to walk in the door and say, so tell me what you do here.

6:00 Right. Exactly. Tell me who you are. Tell me how long you've been with the company. It's like, my gosh, those are some basic things that say you prepared for this and you know a little bit about me and you're ready to have a conversation. Right. Yeah. And I always think about, you know, how much preparation is enough preparation to go into an appointment to be able to meet the expectations of whatever obligations there are of that appointment? And then I know salespeople that will research two or three hours on a cold call and they've never even called or talked to anybody there. That's too much time. You need to be able to have enough information to determine

6:40 if they're qualified prospect or not. And when you start that appointment, you can get to the point and say, you know, before we begin, is it okay? I've done some research before a call. Can I get kind of confirm a few things that I found online? Is that okay? I don't want to be a sub tip and swim that everything that I found online is correct. Can we just kind of go through some basic confirmations of some researchers' assumptions? Yeah. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Okay, great.

7:01 That's it. We've taken two minutes to confirm that versus, oh, it looks like you're doing this. Or I see that you're doing this. Tell me about that. And it ends up dragging on the appointment and not meeting the goal of what the objective is for that primary first sales call. You know, it's interesting because I think one of the things I like to prepare the most is questions. Yeah. And I can tell there's times, you know, I've prepared questions so many times. And I have a file online or a file on my computer of questions. And I go through and I pick an interview that was similar to the kind of company or the situation that I'm going to interview. And I build some

7:36 questions off of that. But there's times even I get lazy when I teach this and I believe it 100%. But you really need to prepare your questions and put them in an order that will make it more and more difficult to get more and more to the core of the issues. Sometimes they'll spew it out when you ask the first question. So tell me what you're looking for, right? And they'll tell you, they'll be real honest. Sometimes you have to weasel it out of them. But if you have your questions ready and I've never had anybody go, what do you got? You got questions all prepared? I'm insulted.

8:10 Right. They're always appreciative that I prepared for this interview, this conversation. And I have it all typed up and it looks nice. Right. Right. I think prospects love it when sales people prepare because the prospect is able to determine where the sales person is going to take them to with the questions. Are you leading me to your solution? Or are you leading me to a solution of which you may be one of the options that I pick. But let's first identify the problem and then criteria as to what the solution would look like. But sometimes prospects are seeing salespeople leading them into a certain area where their specific solution is the only one that's

8:51 that's possible. All right. What else is my advice in this first chapter? So he talks about being simple. Leave the projector at home. You don't need to do a PowerPoint presentation. Just keep it low tack. Bring it in notepad. Bring in your list of questions. Listen to what they're saying. Think about how much time you're talking versus how much time they're talking. Well, I think what he means by leave the projector at home is you're not doing here to do a presentation about how wonderful you are. Yes. Yes. The presentation time might be at the very end of your conversation where you show them a little bit about what you do and how it relates to the issues that they've

9:28 brought up. But it's not time where you come in and you go, let me show you how wonderful XYZ company is. And then you tell me when I hit something that's nice. You know? Exactly. When you want to buy or when you want me to leave one or the other. Well, they stand up and say, well, but they're around you and escort you out. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So that's what I picked up on chapter 10. All right. 11 is structuring a winning sales call. And this is even more full.

9:58 Oh, man. And I'm telling you, we're not going to be able to go through all of it. And if you've got the book, you know how important these two chapters are. And I really highly recommend you consider getting this book. But I want to start with two lines that I read in this chapter. And if we begin with the end in mind, like Covey, I think the context of this chapter will be a lot clearer. So here are the two sentences. More often than not, deals go dark when they're blindsided by some factor, you didn't discover earlier in the process. Boom, totally true. The second one is deals go dark when you get lazy and shoot from the dark and not having enough information. And he

10:37 talks about a great sales process here about a winning sales calls. And I'm going to go through each of the steps and then we can elaborate a little bit more on each one of them. But the first one is build rapport, identify the buyer style. The next one is share the agenda. Number three is clean up their issues. If there are any issues. Number four, deliver the power statement. And you talked about the power statement in previous chapters. Number five is ask probing questions.

11:02 And we'll get into a little bit more about the four types of probing questions. Number six is sell number seven, determine the fit and seek out objections, which is going to surprise some people. And then number eight is define and schedule the next steps. So starting with the first step is bonding and building rapport. I think this is probably one of the most important steps of the sales process. Because if we don't have that trust rapport, we don't get honest answers. When we ask those questions, Bill, prospects will put themselves in a best light possible when we ask them questions that put them in a sort of testing, they're maintaining their dignity at the same time.

11:36 And that's really important to be able to know where they're coming from. Well, that's why I think you need to design your questions. So they start easy and get more difficult. If you start with the most difficult question, you're going to lock them up. Right. Right. But knowing kind of their personality, their demeanor and their priorities,

11:56 Bill and I have two distinct different personalities, priorities, beliefs, etc. And that's how we complement each other too, is that we are different. Mine are a little more right than Scott's. Yes. Depending on what chart you're looking for.

12:14 The next one is share the agenda. And I love this when you have an agenda. And one of the steps in your agenda is for the prospect to describe how the best use of their time would be during the time that you've allotted to meet with them. What would you like to cover? The salesperson is saying, what would you like to cover to the prospect during our time together? And you're leading the sales meeting. Mike really talks about you are the leader of this meeting.

12:38 You are creating the sales process, not following the buyer's process. Right. Right. I thought that was a strong statement too. Yeah. You're in the pilot seat. You're flying this baby. And sometimes you take some advice from them about where you want to go. But you still need to always be in control. Yeah. PIC, pilot and command. I love that analogy. Number three is clean up their issues. If there are any issues, if this is an existing account with multiple transactions or purchase orders or projects, make sure that things are cleaned up. And you're building on a good sound foundation and you've readressed some missed expectations or some areas that you just didn't follow through or

13:20 didn't go through way you wanted to, but clean up those issues. So they can't use that against you in the future. The next one, number four, is deliver that power statement, which is really that punch, that value proposition that here's what makes us different and better. Keep in mind, different is something that you can describe to a prospect. Here's what makes us different than what you have right now. It's the prospect that determines if it's better, better for them, have more value for them, prospects to find value. Salespeople do not.

13:52 And one common challenge we find in working with organizations is they don't know their value. They don't know in a strong way, in a stateable way, why people buy from them and not from their competition. They say things, well, we're build a better product or we're friendly. We give them more time. Those are all pretty vague. We need to get those down to something that there's a power statement that says, this is what you'll get if you work with us. Oh, so true. So true bill, that complacency, that leadership going, it's working. Why would we want to change it? You don't know why it's working. And if something externally changes, you don't know what to do next. You're

14:31 stuck. Okay. So number five is ask probing questions. And there's four types of questions that he talks about in the book, personal questions, strategic and directional questions, specific issue seeking and opportunity seeking questions. And then the sales process questions. And I don't want to go through all of them because there's great questions in that chapter. But all of them have a certain goal and a certain type of outcome that you're going to get from each of those four different questions. And the only thing I'd say about this is I would say personal questions for later, especially the questions like, what are you going to get out of this? What

15:06 does this mean to you if this is successful? I start with strategic and directional questions. Tell me about your product or your issues or what's going on here. Those are easier for them to answer than the personal questions. So for me, those those save a little bit toward the middle of the process. I totally agree with you, Bill. I wanted to be, you know, an accurate historian on the book. But I agree with you those personal questions because people buy emotionally that justified intellectually. So if we're getting to that intellectual process, let's justify it.

15:38 You know, emotionally, it's where it's going to start. I'm sort of confusing myself there. But next one, number six is sell. This is where he says, okay, now here's where you sell, sell, sell. And you do your everything that you've got, you bring it to this point. And then number seven is determine the fit and seek out objections. So you are soliciting objections. You're finding out barriers that are going to hold them back from saying yes to what you're offering. And you need to be able to seek those out while you have everybody in the room thinking about the problem that they have and the solution that you offer. And this is why this is such a great chapter and a great

16:16 topic that Bill is coming up is you get to that point where you're almost forcing them to say no and lose and give something up that they are now emotionally involved in gaining. Oh, the conflict. I love it. When you've done a great job, you can just see it come together. And it's just it's a fantastic transformation. And then the last one is define and schedule next steps, which is the purpose of a meeting. The purpose of a meeting is to determine if there's another meeting is to have another meeting. Not determine is to cause another meeting.

16:52 Well, sometimes it'll die in there. But that's when they're basically saying, no, I don't want to meet with you again. I've had enough and that happens. And you are always so good at setting up those follow up calls. You're okay, let's schedule a time to do it next week. And it's not at the second half of the week, Bill. So it's in the first half of the week, you're a slave driver. All right. So thanks for letting me do the two chapters 10 and 11. All right, next week. So next

17:19 week we'll be doing chapters 12 and 13. Yeah, I'm looking forward to those because these were stellar. And if you're not in this book, you're missing the opportunity to learn because Scott and I cannot cover everything. And then we also have another partner we work with. So let's get some more selling advice from the sales tip from Anthony. Enjoy and learn from the sales tip from Anthony by Anthony and Reno, a highly respected international speaker, best-selling author, entrepreneur and sales leader. Hey, it's Anthony and Reno. All right, this is a tough prompt for me. How can I be more charismatic? I don't know if I can be anymore charismatic. If I was, that would be too much for

18:03 people to even handle and maybe you're like that too. But if you're not, then you want to be more charismatic. First thing that I would tell you to do when you walk into a room, look at people's eyes and smile. If you start smiling, that's the best thing that you can do in seven seconds. People are trying to determine whether they like you or not. It's that fast. So the first thing, start by smiling. The second thing, read books. Read books that other people don't read. So you have conversations that other people are going to think is interesting because you've read these things and now you can talk about them and other people are talking about the same old thing. Maybe they're

18:43 talking about politics or the news or bad news and all those things. One of the things that you can do is to have a better talk track about what's going on in the world and your perspective on these things. If you do that, you can be more charismatic. You can also dress a little nicer and always make sure that your hair looks good unless you're me and then you don't have any hair. You only have eyebrows. But even eyebrows can give you some charisma. See me at thesalesblog.com or come out and say hello at LinkedIn. See you soon. Good tip. Be prepared for the negotiations by having some other items to trade off with your customers. Create a list of ingredients, a list of attributes.

19:28 That you can trade in order to put together that best deal possible for both of you. I love it. I like that he said, you know you're in a negotiation when they start to negotiate. When they say I want to discount or I want something else, it's like bingo, you're in it and it might be in the middle of the sale and you better be ready for it. Right. Exactly. Let's go into our main topic today. What to do when you get a no and we deal with customers who tell you no. It's just a big part of selling Scott. I think it'd be great if we never had to face it. Meaning every customer said yes and we made a sale. But we had a client like that didn't we? Right. And they said we better check

20:06 our pricing. They found out their pricing guy was pricing 35% lower than the competition. No wonder we were getting almost every sale. Yeah. Great guy. Yeah. Great guy. We gave him so much discount that we gave it away. My son works for a company and they have obviously sales tiers and he's always fighting with the salespeople because he's in finance because they want to give the best sales tier to somebody who's doing $17,000 a year. But you know that million-dollar customer he says we're giving a million-dollar price break to the guy who's doing $17,000 a year because we must save that customer. It's like oh god please let some of these customers. Who's

20:44 selling who? Oh my god. So I think facing no it could be mental or emotional. We talked with Jennifer in our last podcast about kind of the emotional things that happen and taking a no can be can have emotional or mental repercussions. But let's talk about that. How do we get better because we get told no by a prospect? So I've got two categories here I want to talk about Scott mental and emotional and then learning opportunity. So the mental emotional got three things. One have a growth mindset. Be thinking about that everything I do is a chance to learn and improve.

21:26 It's not a failure. John Maxwell wrote a great book called Failing Forward which means every time you fail everything that you face that doesn't work out the way you want. You're either winning or you're learning and those are our choices. So having that mindset is important. Second, don't take it personally. This isn't about you and that's what we talked about in the opening. Salespeople are like okay I'm very likable. Everybody loves me. I want to be loved by everybody.

21:54 Then we take that no and you know they're like pouting about it. Well don't they like me. What could I have done? I've told you the story. I was one of my first presentations when I was with Carnegie. It was down in City, South of here and I had about 100 people there and 98 said I was great and two of them said I sucked and I went back to my boss and I said what could I have done to make these two love me. He said, J.J. got 98%. What are you complaining about? No you're not going to get everybody. Right. I think about the days when I was wearing a younger man's clothes I worked in the restaurant business as a server and I've coffee my station. If somebody didn't want coffee I

22:36 didn't take it personally. We're just going back in the corner and cry. I need to go out break. Oh well I'll stay sit over. Yeah so you know that shows you're not getting enough deals tell you the truth. You don't have enough in your in your pipeline. So now you're all that one customer you had a chance with said no and now you got to start over. You got to have five six seven deals going in your pipeline. So when the one doesn't go for you you go next. Right. Next. A great word for salespeople. Next. Right. What's the next deal I've got. My third one on this is stay positive. A positive mindset can help you deal with rejection, criticism and conflict. If I'm taking it personally

23:17 it means I've got a very short sighted view of the world. If I'm staying positive and I'm thinking you know what I learned some things I'm going to move on. I've got other I got four other customers I'm talking to. All those things help you stay positive. Right. I think the worst case scenario that you can ever say is all I need is a good night's rest and tomorrow will be a completely different day. Yeah. Way to go. Yeah. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. I said worst case scenario the best case scenario is you take a break and and you maybe call a friend or read a blog from your most favorite newsletter and then you just kind of get back up on the horse again. But worst case scenario

23:55 is all I need is a good night's rest and tomorrow will be a better day. You know it's funny too. I think sometimes success can do the same thing. It can kill us because we got that deal we're like okay now I got that deal I can you know I can take the day off early and instead that's when you should be putting the power on. Right. That's when you should be pressing because we got them on a run. What else can I do? I'm in a positive state of mind. When you fail you got to work to be more positive. When you win you're positive naturally don't take that positiveness and go use it playing a game of golf. Use that positive feeling getting better. I think about winning a deal and

24:38 getting a sale is very much like getting into a car after a car wash. Oh god this feels so good. I love it and the car rides so much smoother. I feel so much better. I just want to drive forever that car after it's just been washed. So have that mindset up. I just made a sale. I got a brand new car and it's clean. Let's go for a drive. Make more sales. Let's do something. Yeah. All right. So I got a few more here in how it can be a learning opportunity a chance to get better. First of all actively seek feedback. There's nothing wrong with talking to a customer and we've done this before and saying what did we do or what did we not do that made this made you not want to go with us

25:21 in the sales process. Generally they'll say something like well we decided we couldn't afford it or and we're not going to drop our price. Sometimes we can look at options but we're not going to drop our price to make somebody afford something. I'm not giving away what I do. But sometimes we're just out of whatever they saw as their price range and we couldn't help them justify what they would do for that. You're going to deal with people that are just price conscious for example or they had another option they chose with. Scott and I are looking at three different options for a project and none of it would be personal. Just one's more expensive and one's going

26:04 to work with us in a different way and so we just have some different options we have to choose from. Find out what the reason you lost that sale and see if that's something that you can do better the next time. I think a good way to start that conversation is just say can we have a post aftermath kind of conversation off the record what could we have done different what could we have done better what could we have done to be able to retain your business off the record and they'll be surprised what they'll tell you off the record because now they know you're not going to take it personally. Right. Right. Yeah you can't go in there crying. It doesn't

26:38 right you know doesn't make them feel good. All right. So analyze and improve analyze your wins and your losses continue to refine your approach. You know one of the things if you talk about Scott does a really good job on 12 questions you should ask early on in the sales process things like budget who else is responsible for this who else is going to be involved and sometimes you'll find out in the middle of the sale that you missed a question. Don't let that go by.

27:05 Oh yeah okay thanks for the proposal I need to show this to my boss. You missed making sure the boss was involved and having that conversation with the boss because now they're going to be the decision maker or part of that decision. We'll write that down and make sure you don't screw that up the next time. I always like it when I ask people what are common objections you get no give me three or four comments and I'll say what are your answers to these and they never thought about having a response to those objections. If they're common objections be ready for them and that's our next point prepare for the objections. Right. Knowing what comes knowing what your

27:43 common objections are you should be dealing with them early in if price is a common objection somewhere in the process before you present the price you got to let them know that you're going to be higher price in the competition and why. Don't let it be a shock. Right. Right. Right. Bring it up in the beginning and then give your whole demonstration about why you're more expensive and how they're going to get more value. And then when they say well you're a little bit more expensive you're like yeah we're proud of that. But if you hang your head in shame and go oh I know we're a little bit about 10% more and well you're not going to get there. Okay and then my last point on this

28:22 is adapt to the customer's needs. You've got to listen to what the customers want and find ways to give it to them. Quite often the reason we lose a sale is they don't see the connection between what we're offering and what they need. And that's because salespeople don't ask enough questions driving down that need driving down the motivation. This is a common thing we're finding too Scott. They're not asking motivation questions. They're asking all technical questions.

28:52 How big, how fast, how, what's the size spot, where do you want to put this, how do you want to attach it to your current product, blah blah blah and those are all important. But they never ask those questions like so tell me if this project goes well what does that mean for you. Who else, how are your bosses viewing whether this project is successful or not. What ways can I help you make this project successful so that your career and we together grow your business.

29:23 Wow. What happens if you say yes and somebody above you says no. Great question. And now what are we going to do and then you're going to really find out how emotionally committed your prospect is to the project and how you can work with your prospect to sell it up because there's a possibility that somebody else will say no. This is how we need to get on the same side of the table with our prospects and really have a conversation with them a collaborative conversation of how can we come up together with the solution to a problem and have the best value for both of us. And that's the beginning of the conversation from that point forward is that goal. Yeah. And when you lose a sale learn from it.

30:06 As John Maxwell says fail forward. Don't go to your room and cry. Have the courage to say let's sit down and talk about what we did. Can you give me five minutes to just help me find out I want to get better at what I do. Help me find out what I did or didn't do that caused you to say no to the sale. I'm happy to listen to you and as Scott said it's off the record that's a great way to say I'm not going to get mad at you. I just need to grow and learn. And maybe what you're doing in that conversation Scott is you're laying the groundwork for the next opportunity.

30:40 Because you took it like a mature adult. Learn from it. Right. They might call you back the next time they need something similar. Well it's one of the five outcomes of a sales call is a lesson. You get a lesson. Boy if I had a chance to do it over here's what I would do different. And and this is where you know just a great combination of the two topic of the book and your topic bill. So really a great episode. I think a great reminder for a lot of the things that our listeners have done in the past that maybe they've changed jobs or they've changed a role and now they go oh I forgot how I used to do that. And it's a good reminder. Yep you bet. Some more resources today. Again check

31:18 out Anthony and Arino's blog the sales blog dot com. Our golden nugget today is don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can by John Wooden. Some of you recognize that quote and some of you are following our famous UCLA basketball coach John Wooden. Yeah I think it's so important we get so frustrated by what we aren't able to do. It's nice in sales that we don't have to sell to people that we can't sell to. Go find that target customer and make your sales easier because well I can't sell to this kind of customer. Okay fine. There's a million other ones out there.

31:56 Right. Go find the type that you can sell to that you enjoy working with and you'll do a lot better. Yeah. Yeah. For all this information it's going to be in our show notes. Look for it there. Winning at selling dot com and this is episode 643. So again next week we're going to be doing the book new sales simplified chapters 12 and 13 and the topic is debriefing the sales call. Please subscribe and share this podcast with your colleagues and on social media. Go out and get better one skill at a time. Joyful selling.